If you’ve glanced upon my iShred review, then you already know how I raved about Frontier Design Group. The piano is evidently the latest instrument these talented developers have tackled for the iDevice. I may not be a professional musician with the piano (mainly because my house simply isn’t big enough for a grand piano), but I can honestly say this is the most complex and intuitive piano application I have ever come across.

The University of New South Wales in Sydney have come up with a very general, yet good test of your ears’ own equaliser settings. Essentially, it proves that while you can hear 30Hz – 16 KHz, you may find certain frequencies much louder than others. This test (link after break) should be taken in an absolutely quiet environment with the best headphones or earphones you own. However, most headphones, loudspeakers, et al., impose their own frequency responses upon your hearing. This test has not been formatted for your source or your headphones, so it can remain only a general indication.

The music game genre of iphone apps has been seriously lacking competition as of late. Fortunately, the last month or so has seen the release of multiple games for your idevice that follow the tried and true formula of tapping to the beat. These games are easy to pick up, hard to perfect, and totally addictive and TapStar epitomises the lot of them!

So you’ve just been kicked out of your (garage) band due to one too many indecent exposure charges, or worse yet, you simply lack the talent. You’ve been blacklisted and no one wants to pump up the jam with you. What do you do? Form a one man band using your iPhone of course! Guiz de Pessemier, a fellow Canadian from Montreal, shows you that with a little practice, some much needed talent and the help of a few apps, you can indeed make sweet music with the amazing iDevice. In the above video, Guiz uses the drum app Kanondrum (free), Bassist by MooCowMusic ($2.99) and iShred by Frontier Design ($4.99, our review) to rock out the tune “Twist and Shout”. Bet you never would have guessed the iPhone could make such capable musical instruments eh? Be sure to check out Guiz playing the Apple iPhone 3G ad tune using just apps after the jump.

Tap Tap Revenge’s fame is unparalleled. Just as Tap Tap Revenge brought on an onslaught of clones and apps similar that were trying to steal its limelight, so did other well known games such as Flight Control. DJ Mix Tour doesn’t fall into the category of being a Tap Tap Revenge clone, but more or less a variation of the popular franchise with its own sui generis aspects and high quality Gameloft flare.

I’ll admit to being a little slow. Or perhaps I’ve just made the sad mistake of comparing myself to the nearly wired-from-birth kids of today – a reason that helps me delight in 13-year-old Scott Campbell’s decision to slum it with Sony’s now archaic original Walkman for a few days. My first cassette tape player nearly fit in the overly baggy sk8tr jeans of my 14-year-old self; the fact that one leg of my jeans could swallow my entirep waist unfortunately didn’t help the tape player to comfortably fit into a pocket. Nearly everyone over 20 is likely to have at least held one of these for a few minutes. But a hallowed few have owned and collected cassette tape players, debated their sound quality in forums and still promote the classic portable platform. Scott, on the other hand, had no idea there was another side to a cassette tape!

The App Store has been gifted with many applications for musicians and aspiring DJs. While many of these apps have their positives and negatives, they all lacked a pivotal use of the accelerometer. GravSynth, developed by KAYAC Inc., sets itself apart from all beat synthesizers in the respect that it doesn’t solely rely on different track pads and arbitrary sound effects. Heck, it only has one specific beat sound. While this may seem like it kills the longevity because it lacks variety, this is definitely not the case with GravSynth. Once you experiment with the magnitude of settings, and how crucial the accelerometer plays in the process, you soon realize what makes GravSynth unique.

Among many hidden and official features of the new OS, there is speculation, hype and perhaps even a bit of placebo stirring among the enthusiastic audiophile crowd; apparently, the new OS has improved the sound of both the iPhone and the iPod Touch. I am a keen member of headfi, a great headphone-devoted forum where you can geek out with enthusiasts, trade, sell, barter, discuss and make noise about your favourite phones, amps and cables. Since 2004, I have been perusing heafi and since 2006, verbosely posting. In my short time, I have seen the coming and going of many hype threads and and others that are true treasues. As a portable audiophile, I am more than interested in claims that OS 3.0 improves iDevice sound quality.

I came to the happy monochromatic world of Apple MP3 players in 2007 after hating everything portable that was not minidisc. For good reason too – in 2004, there simply were no fully-featured player/recorders that did not hiss from their headphone jacks like the more dangerous snakes in the world. Sure, there were half-attempts from the likes of Rio and iRiver, but nothing that made my Sharp Auvi-powered MD recorder waver in the reeds.

Not mine. In fact I shuffle parts of my library very regularly so that my iPod Touch is never more than 1/3 full. Still, that is probably only 1000 songs at a maximum. However, if technology will have its way (and it will), the next next next next iPod could carry millions of songs. How will this be accomplished? Well, let me remind you about a great feature called digital compression. It has been around since the dawn of mathematics, but only in the last 30 or so years, been applied to music. In fact, the world’s de facto audio standard, the Redbook CD is compressed at 16 bits and 44.1 kHz.